he focused in on the centrosome and the two centrioles, a name given to them when people didn’t know anything about them.

(135)

(the soul of the cell)

If a passer-by – something that never occurred though – would have seen Shano sitting there in the middle of a field on the gentle slope of an enormous hillside, he would merely have seen a young man, perhaps a student, sitting with his nose near the ground, and the passer-by, returning and seeing that nothing had changed even after three hours, would have been concerned, and would have wondered whether this boy was perhaps dead, or at least sick in his mind. And if he would have walked up to Shano, and informed about his well being, Shano would not have moved or answered – he was completely absorbed in what he saw. No burning sun or beating rain could have disturbed him.

Shano wanted to know more about the centrioles. He focused further and further, and found that the cylinders consisted of bent lamellas. What was the special effect of these lamellas – which were parallel to the axis of the cylinders was that they threw a special shadow inside the cylinder, and because a cylinder is round, every shadow was different. Then he saw that at the inside edge of each lamella, inside the cylinder, was a special spot. This spot was either in the light coming from outside the cell, or in the shadow. In this way the cell knew the direction where the light came from, the cell could kind of calculate that! Now of course the space from where light may enter is three-dimensional. So that is why there were two cylinders, situated perpendicular. So the cell knew the direction of the light three-dimensionally, and apparently could choose to move to it or from it. This, Shano realized, implied intelligence. But cells have no brains. Or have they? From the microsome cylinders structures radiating to all sides were visible, and, enlarging his focus still more, he saw that ions – electrified atoms – were moving from the center to the periphery and back, like the potassium and sodium ions along the axon of a nerve sell. In electric ways matter is moved around, and he saw that the cell pushed itself in the direction it apparently wanted. Does a cell ‘want’ something? In other words, do cells have their own individual consciousness? When this question came to his mind, Shano began to see even more intriguing things, as if he himself was inside the cell. His whole life he had been able to sometimes see beings in Nature which were invisible for most people. This he had looked at, as you know, since he was a little boy living with his parents. To his own amazement he discovered what he had never expected: it worked in this scale just as well as on the scale of everyday life. The microscope was only a technical instrument, and the technicians knew nothing about clairvoyance – most of them didn’t even belief it could exist. So what Shano saw now had nothing to do with the microscope. Because what he saw was of another, more subtle degree of matter, his vision had nothing to do with what we normally call small or big. Size as we know it just didn’t belong to the properties of this ‘astral’ matter.

Suddenly he saw at the place where the centrosome cylinders were situated, a stream of ‘invisible’ living energy entering the cell’s body. It was no ‘foreign’ energy, just coming from somewhere out of the sky or the universe like light or warmth or cosmic rays, but this energy specifically belonged to that cell only. Now he understood the importance of that point in the cell: the cell was actually guided from that point, by this stream of living energy. Where did it come from? He now realized that the cell itself was more than a physical body alone. It had a counterpart of ‘stardust’ or ‘astral’ matter, which was of a more subtle and radiant nature, just as is the case with humans and all other living beings. His clairvoyance could not penetrate beyond the astral – though he knew that there were many more aspects to even a cell than only the physical and the astral body. But he could reason that beyond the astral their was an intelligent influence which belonged to the very heart of the cell. The cell on itself was a very simple being, hardly aware of its own existence, and certainly could not ‘think’ as we do, or even animals do. But intelligence is not the same as thinking. It was an intelligence which did not belong to the center of consciousness of the cell, but to its heart. No doubt, Shano thought, there must be a much greater universal or cosmic intelligence, which reflected itself and thus was inherent in every existing thing, like physical matter is inherent in every physical body. The microsome region seemed to play the same role for the cell’s body as Shano’s heart region did for Shano’s body. He was astounded by the complexity of the energies streaming into the little cell he was watching – and still it was very primitive compared to what happened in his own heart. The energies of his own heart – which, by the way, (because few people know that), contains more nerve cells than muscle cells, and is thus in the first place a center of data processing, and only secondarily a blood pumping instrument – also went into all directions, through nerves and other, more subtle energy channels, especially towards the brain, and other organs in his body. Moreover the radiation emanating from his heart was perceptible at least two feet outside his body. The same, on its own level of course, was true for the cell. Instantly Shano felt more respect for that one ‘simple’ cell than for the most complex computer steered assemblage factory made by humans.

Still increasing the magnification factor of his microscope, he could see all atoms and molecules individually. So he could also see inside the ribosomes and into the cell’s nucleus, and see how molecules were made. Every single atom was brought to its right place by tiny ‘invisible’ beings or ‘working energies’ and every molecule that had to be transported from one place inside the cell (like messenger-RNA from inside the nucleus to the ribosomes) was helped by another molecule that had the power of motion. This was not at all a chance process, flowing forth by chance from the inherent electrical properties of the atoms, but everything was helped and guided by tiny beings, most of which looked like vortices or living balls of energy, who seemed to know what they were doing (not self-consciously, but by designation as it were) steered by some specialized intelligence who used them as laborers – or rather slaves, I should perhaps say, because they had no interests of their own. It was amazing beyond Shano’s power to be amazed. He felt that he himself was the limiting factor in understanding and wonderment of what he saw, and he also felt that all this happened within himself as well.

At once he had made some crucial discoveries for the science of biology. Not only that cells had a ‘soul’ or an inner being – which had long be presumed by some scientists, but could never be proven – but also that such seemingly automatic processes (changes in the structure of DNA, relocation of its building units) of mutation – often regarded as mistakes of nature (which indeed also seem to occur as accidents due to harsh outward influences, but relatively rarely) were actually guided from within, from the invisible heart of the cell. The same applied to activation or suppression of the activity of certain parts of chromosomes, so that certain cells would be functioning in one way, while other cells which contained the same chemical DNA-code would function in another way. Such suppressions or activations would be temporarily, according to the needs of the moment, but mutations were definite, and therefore had a lasting influence on the following generations. Mutations, which are irreversible, are thought by biologists to be the cause of evolution, and can either lead to success or failure. Shano saw that it was a little different. Mutations only changed the code for defining the sequence of the building blocks of proteins, nothing more than that, but that could have a big influence on the physique of a creature. However, why and how the mutations took place was guided from within – that is, from within the cell, or rather from the invisible energy streams entering the cell through its stardust or astral model. If a cell was part of a larger being – like a human being or plant or animal having billions of cells, the information streaming into the cell was again informed and guided by the ‘oversoul’ of all the cells of their body. So it appeared to be ultimately the inner drive of evolution of the immortal soul of the human, animal or plant, perhaps working through the noumenon of each, that caused evolution. Then, of course, one can assume that humanity, and the animal, mineral and other kingdoms of nature, themselves form a large unity, depending on an ‘oversoul’ for all life on the planet. Then, Shano reasoned, each species, each being, whether big or small, whether visible or invisible to the human eye, though each having its own individual evolution and freedom, was again subservient to a larger, apparently intelligent conscious ‘entity’ which we might perhaps call the ‘soul of our planet.’ Whether that ‘soul of the planet’ was itself aware of all this, Shano couldn’t conclude – after all we as humans are not consciously aware of all the processes in our body, and certainly not of the processes on the level of our cells. But one thing his vivid mind could not avoid to assume: for every single existing thing there is a self-conscious enjoyer somewhere. He himself enjoyed seeing and feeling and thinking all this so much, that the whole universe would seem senseless to him, if it were not entirely filled with ‘enjoyers’ and ‘creators’ of new subtle ideas and forms. Happiness, or rather spiritual joy, must be inherent everywhere, he thought, even inside an atom.

As to atoms, he greatly increased his magnifying factor again, and now reached more than one million times, and ever more. He could now see that atoms themselves were like vortices of living energies, or better to say, conscious beings, and were together with all existing things, part of conscious Being, Universal Being. This was as far as his mind could ponder. What was meant by ‘Being’ and ‘Universal’ seemed to stretch forever beyond the capacities of the mind. It was always greater, or had deeper aspects to be understood. Each atom was like an individual ‘solar system,’ but he perceived it not as ‘balls turning around balls,’ but as a grand organism of energy turning around a center of a higher type of energy, and in this were particular focal points of energy of that system which were so dense that they seemed individualities, with there own evolution and elaboration of life-aspects. Everything constantly came into being and disappeared, in time-quantities far faster than even nanoseconds, to embody (or ‘reincarnate’) and ‘die’ in almost circular, or sinusoid if you include time, movements of consciousness.

Shano had been sitting there for at least three hours. As everything runs in circles, also Shano had to adjust to his ‘circles’ of day and night, of eating, drinking and all that goes with that. He had nobody to prepare him his meals or do his shopping. He had to find and prepare everything himself, and that took a considerable part of his time. So he stood up, a little stiff, and continued his walk.

Anyway, after this experience, Shano had a lot to think about. What he had experienced through his microscope-gadget was almost a mystic experience. But that it was not really.

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Quote:

If theosophy has one natural enemy against which it has fought and will always fight it is the materialistic view of life, the view that nothing exists except dead unconscious matter and that the phenomena of life and thought and consciousness spring from it.

- G de Purucker - Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy p. 65-66.

(foreign terms see Glossary above right)

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